Garage Roof Insulation

We've been noticing that the roof of our garage isn't insulated very well. 

We're clearly losing heat through it, and since our heat is from a ground source heat pump now, it feels more precious.

Materials are hard to come by at this point in Covid-times, but we were able to get some rolls of appropriate insulation after waiting 2 months for delivery. I put up the insulation, and now the snow stays on our garage roof for days and days, instead of melting immediately and leaving frozen puddles on our driveway.

Street Address and Front Entry Lights

Here's another project that has "finally" been tackled: our street address plaque.

Here's the old version that came with the house:

You can see where there used to be a security light above the plaque. It was against HOA guidelines, kinda ugly, and made it impossible to read our street address when it was on, so it was an easy choice to remove it.

I have had the numerals for our new plaque sitting in my shop for over two years now. This project was delayed again and again because I wanted our street address to be back lit or illuminated somehow. Potential solutions ranged from back lighting with LEDs, to using one or more spotlights, to using an electroluminescent panel. I finally decided to just use a length of LED strip I picked up on sale a while ago, and just get it done.

It turned out the numerals we picked up so long ago where actually meant to be set in masonry. But it was nothing a drill, a hacksaw and some superglue couldn't fix:

Here's the plaque, mounted, with the LED strip:

I'll put some silicone in the hole, and touch up the paint another (warmer) day.

Since I had my tools out, I decided to mount the rest of the LED strip under the eave of the roof along the side of the garage. It was pretty dim along the walkway to our front door before this:

Now walking to the front door after dark is a completely different experience!

Smart Sprinkler System - Installed

I posted about a smart sprinkler system two years ago.

Recently I found a Gen 1 Rachio Iro at Home Depot for 70% off (they were clearing stock for the Gen 2).

Here's what the old system looked like:

And here's the new one:

I haven't actually turned it on yet - the sprinklers are dry for the winter right now, and I don't want to dry-operate the valves.

When we turn the sprinklers on, I'll be able to program the sprinkler schedule from my phone, rather than that stupid dial on the old system. Supposedly the new system can also keep track of the weather, so the sprinklers don't turn on while it's raining. And finally, there's an Alexa skill to control the sprinklers via voice commands.

I'm totally going to spray Lincoln at least once during the summer months :-D

Garage Electrical and Lighting

I saw a deal on an LED strip and decided to add some additional light to our garage, so we could see into our trunks better.

If I were to do this again, I'd probably snap a chalk line as a guide - the LED strip kinda undulates as it is.

I had to add an outlet for this light (and re-purposed a Zwave plug) to power the LED strip. In the process, I definitively verified that the seller was lying about having a 240 volt circuit in the garage - the little sub-panel he installed in the garage is single-phase only, and the supply wiring is only rated for 15 amps! Fortunately, the washer and dryer back up against the garage, and since we switched over to a natural gas dryer, there is an unused 240 volt circuit nearby - the dream of having a high-capacity electric car charger is still alive!

The outlets in the garage all tested as having the hots and neutrals swapped, so I replaced the outlets with tamper-resistant outlets and fixed the hot/neutral issue. When I had everything buttoned up, I tested again and discovered the entire garage isn't grounded properly! Ugh. I'll have to fix that when I have more time.

Wednesday at Home

Today was my first day off due to going down to 80% time at work!

I had a pretty good time! Link and I played "MECHA-LINK: Destroyer of Worlds" and bothered Brianna while she was working from home (which is what she normally does on Wednesdays right now):

Later Link supervised while I changed the air filters on my car and fixed the car stereo (which involved removing the stereo from the dash, frowning at it, replacing it in the dash, and it working properly again):

And in the afternoon Link and I drove down to Colorado Springs to wish Uncle Jarred a Happy birthday and give Brianna's Grandparents (who had just arrived from California) a chance to meet Link, since originally Link was scheduled to be in Colorado Springs with his Grandma today, before I suddenly had the day off.

All it all, it was a pretty good day!

Parking in the Garage

Back when we first bought the house, Brianna told me that maybe she would like a hanging tennis ball that would tell her exactly how far to pull into the garage.

I hadn't heard anything more about that idea, until it cropped up again this weekend for some reason.

So, now Brianna has a tennis ball for extra parking precision.

I didn't estimate where the ceiling eyebolt should go as well as I hoped, but this should be sufficient. The string is anchored next to the door to the house, for easy adjustment later.

Painting Trim

I painted the trim that belongs in the Master Bedroom today. It was in such bad shape it needed two coats of paint. It'll dry overnight, and tomorrow I'll bring it in from the garage. Cars will just have to suffer being parked outside after four months of staying nice and cozy in the garage overnight.

I was hoping to get the trim in the guest bedroom painted today, but at this point in the evening I don't think it's going to happen.

I Love Parking in a Garage

I listened to the neighbors scrape ice off their windshield for 10 minutes this morning. I just opened the garage door and was on my way. :-D

Cars in the Garage

Muah-Hah-Hah-Ha! No scraping the windshield for us tomorrow!

Painting the Garage

Phew, we painted the garage last night, including the ceiling. Just getting the cobwebs and dust cleaned up took over an hour, and we kinda did a slapdash job of the actual painting. If we want to make it look nice, we'll have to do a second coat. But, for the purposes of cleaning up the smoky garage and getting it ready to actually store stuff, it's sufficient.

Man alive, painting 10-foot ceilings is a pain. I'm just so looking forward to the 20-foot ceilings in the living and dining rooms. :-/

Oh, yeah - we did an awesome piece of abstract art on the garage floor, as you can see in the photo above. Like I said - a slapdash job. We are in the process of taking it much more slowly and doing a better job with the rest of the house.

Chrysalis

I found about a dozen of these stuck to the rafters and wall studs, beneath the insulation. Anybody know what they are?

Update: Someone chimed in to say they were probably Mason bee mud homes. Any body else want to chime in?

Smokers' Garage: Round 2

This time I came prepared.

I got it all compacted down into 8 garbage bags, plus two from the previous day of removing insulation.

Aaaaand this is why I went through the effort. Look at those stains. 

Brianna poked her head into the garage once after I had all the insulation ripped out but not sealed in plastic yet. She started coughing within 10 seconds. :-/ Really glad I had the respirator, and really glad this particular job is done.

Smoker's Garage

The previous owners had the garage set up as their winter smoking room. While this is certainly better for us than if they had done all that smoking in the house, the garage smells pretty gross.

I started tearing out the exposed insulation in the garage. By the time I had accumulated 2 trash bags of old insulation, I felt like I had smoked a pack of cigarettes myself. I got about 25% of the way through, and I'm bringing my respirator next time for the rest of the job.